eosmusashi

Absolutely amazing!!!! Hats off

Not the best choice of words for a title hahaha, still regretting it because even I picture a YF-19 inside a blender, every single time

Dude you're awesome, great work!! Very inspiring!!

I can share some of the references I've been collecting about New Edwards and the YF-19 (I can make a couple of orthographic views for you to get references) my work is not as polished as yours but it might help you, congrats on finishing this amazing VF!

The progress reel so far

Heeey it's been ages! But I'm still working on this, it's just that my laptop sucks a little bit at rendering....

I've been working out the compositing in Blender to build up a turntable animation. Just finished it so here are some gifs:

here's how it works: I render the camera point of view from the lower cockpit screens (Virtual Environment Cockpit or VEC for shorts)

Then I render the rear view mirror camera...

And then the cockpit from the pilot's point of view, so it's 3 different renders to get the thing completed. I then add the HUD information.

Did the same thing again but with landing and navigation lights, compositing on an HDRI background so I had to extract the shadows information, and I re-composited the HUD so it looked better:

Previous test. I changed my approach after finding it impossible to match the texture HUD with the over-the-comp HUD:

So once again: VEC...

Rear view mirror:

Background from the pilot's perspective (so I can edit and comp the cockpit better:

Ta-da!

Updates, I've been learning how to make a heat effect for the thrusters (and for the turntable animation I'm planning):

First I learned how to make particles in Blender, then I started learning how to make them behave like a fast moving smoke that would follow the turbines.

Then after I got the particles working correctly, I used a composite mode in Blender with different render layers to get the smoke as a separate entity, then a distort filter on the finished render with the plane and the background, and the smoke's alpha as the parameter.

The effect looks pretty cool and weird from certain angles:

The smoke was not following the engine close enough so the heat effect looks delayed. I did some fixes to the particle speed and also added the smoke as an entity so it receives light and can be perceived as a hot system. The final render got some issues with camera clipping and the fact that I wasn't baking the particles so they began producing the smoke every time I restarted the render (this animation took almost a week of leaving the computer rendering at night) So that choppy feel of the engine going on and off is because I didn't bake it

Looks pretty cool tho!! Here's a wallpaper for you guys, with what I've learned so far:

Amazing model , not so good camera work great job!!!! Inspired by this!!

r u planing to some how port then to a flight sim when your done? if so FSX please? X Plane sucks (atleast for me) srry if u already answerd this ? already. also looks gr8t u have skills

I'm a super big fan of FSX I haven't played x-Plane, I'd looove to see this plane in FSX with some sort of glass view from the cockpit, maybe someday I can convert this model into a simpler lower poly archive that can be loaded... but it's not my goal right now. The goal is to make a shortfilm with this.

Updates!! Closeups and fixes to the Battroid mode, adding some more bolts and nuts and interesting stuff to the mechanical hidden parts.

Some mirroring needed...

Fixing the visor shader so you can see more of the insides...

More detail needed inside the shoulders and that thermal exhaust on the laser is too big...

Agree on Bryan Cranston because he's awesome and he's the perfect match to our memories of Isamu speaking in English.

I would totally cast him to be Capt. Gloval with a fantastic moustache if there was ever a Macross movie, and I know for sure he'd be delighted since we all know how much he loves the series.

But in the meantime and for this project's intention, I'm sticking with the character description of Isamu being half Japanese/half European in race.

Aw hell yuss!!!!

Small fix to the border of the nose sensor

Apologies for the delay, I had been rendering these past weeks but I wanted to put everything up on my blog first. Here are the things I've fixed:

Fixes to the feet hinges and mechanisms, here's the before:

And here's the after:

Some closeups I made for the GERWALK mode while I fixed things like the normal map orientation and the little texture issues.

Pro tip: Google for Asian-European male models at home, in private, and not in your spare minutes while exporting shots where other animators can see you staring at pics of sexy almost naked male models and start asking questions. "I'm looking for references" apparently is no good enough of an answer, even in this industry

Leon D, half Japanese American model

Football player Sakai Gotoku

I think I'll run a shortlist now, otherwise this is never going to end (and Isamu is not too visible in the film as I'm planning it, but I thought I'd keep it realistic anyway)

depends... are we casting for looks? or who can play a lovable egotist-prick?

Looks only, this is for an animated shortfilm with a realistic looking Isamu, based on the character data (half Japanese, half European, 24 y/o, slim and with angled features), not on the Anime drawing. The dickhead attitude is just a bonus.

Awesome.

How many man-hours does it take to current progress ?

Thanks! I'm doing a steady rate of 1 hour per day, every day. Give or take half an hour for rendering things. Sometimes I leave it on all night rendering.

We have two finalists! Lewis Tan, from British mother and Asian father, 29 y/o. Just look at that smirky face.

And Forrest Kiyoshi Hoffman, quite the handsome fella

I think Isamu should look less pretty and more like an Asian caricature of Maverick, but there are plenty of good photos of this last guy so that would make it super easy to sculpt. Currently leaning towards choosing Lewis Tan as the Isamu model.

I began looking for models but it seems athletes are also a good pick. This is Genki Dean, who's also part Japanese, and who also smiles in that dreamy special way that makes you want to punch him in the face.

Ryu Shichinohe certainly has the hair

And my Japanese friends would kill me, but David Lee McInnis (half Korean, half German-Scottish) has got the face angles

Part of me wants to just find a caucasian smirky dude with the same facial features as the anime, and the other part keeps thinking anime characters usually don't portray Japanese features well (unless it's their point that they're Japanese) so the result might not look like Isamu, but it would be "correctly him". I'll keep searching. Feel free to post suggestions and if you find good candidates for other characters (based on their age and supposed ethnicity) feel free to!

I'm talking physically, not personality-wise. I'm making this project http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=43932 of a more realistic approach to the YF-19, and the next thing in queue is to create Isamu himself. So I want to find good references for his face to make a realistic looking one, not Anime-like. I'm not too worried about the body because he'll be wearing his pilot suit.

According to the Macross wiki, I need to find a fairly young (25 y/o, sorry Bryan Cranston!!) Japanese-European slim guy with angular features. I wouldn't worry about the hair because only God knows how the hell I'm going to do that in Blender.

Nationality

Japanese/European

I think the easiest thing is to find male models, not only because that guarantees plenty of shots from different angles to get a precise sculpture, but because they usually look like douchebags in photos and I want that smirky know-it-all attitude.

Some Japanese feature would be awesome since he's supposed to be of a mixed race. Any help would be thanked!!! We could run a thread on other proposals for the rest of the Macross saga if you want!! (Zero, SDF1, Macross II, 7, Frontier, Delta!)

To get the ball rolling, I found this guy on Google Images, Japanese athlete Koji Murofushi (right)

Question for you regarding the intakes, is the "plate" you've got the intake compressors mounted to, flat? I'm recalling there was some sort of smooth transition between the shape in the intake, to the fan face itself. I'm not sure if it's lighting or the shape itself, but it really looks flat. Because your 3d model looks so real, that's about the only thing that jumps out at me as being not quite realistic. Given how fast this thing is supposed to be able to go, the thought of the super sonic intake air smashing into that flat part around the intake fan just seems a bit unbelievable. I know, on a giant transforming robot/jet...

Man thanks for taking the time to comment! I think this is worth giving a second look because you're right, it looks flat... I guess I wasn't too good at modelling when I was in that part, so I've recently updated the geometry to a single smooth piece and the shape of the fan to make it much closer to the anime, so I'll post the render soon!

Love the work, but the scratched instrument screen is too much. Any military would have that replaced on the aircraft immediately.

Yeah, I agree, I probably went a bit overboard with it, so I toned it down, thanks!!

I'm doing a bunch of closeup renders of the fuselage to fix small stupid things, mostly the normals. So here are a few of them:

Hello! My name is Eduardo, I was born in Mexico and I've been living for the past 6 years in New Zealand, working as an animator in this beautiful country.

I grew up watching Robotech, and sadly I didn't realize the truth about it until about high school. I remember thinking the first season was awesome and the following ones were meh, I was really mostly in for the planes becoming robots, I've always been a huge fan of aviation, military vehicles and sci-fi, so Macross lives deep in my heart.

I remember watching Macross Plus in VHS tape when I was 14 or 15, and it absolutely blew my mind. The YF-19 became my personal favourite plane, mecha and vehicle of all times. Later on, after a few anime conventions, I catched up on the rest of the sagas, Macross II (ok), Macross 7 (nope) and then finally with Internet at the tips of my fingers, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. My first thought when watching it in Japanese with subtitles, while associating the images with my memories of childhood was "WTF is wrong with the music!? It sounds like a soap opera".

About two years ago I found this forum and became immersed in all things Macross again. I rewatched Macross Plus and thought, man, wouldn't it be awesome to have my own YF-19? Well, I guess I can now, since I've been working in the CG world for a big chunk of my life now, and Blender 3d was beginning to pick up track, so I thought, what the hell. I'll learn Blender! And my first project shall be the YF-19 "Alpha One" from Macross Plus.

My hobbies include flight simulators, computer games, movies, animation and running. I'm currently working as a postvis artist for the new Thunderbirds are Go! TV show, and guess who designed one of the Thunderbirds new ships? Shoji frakking Kawamori himself. My life is complete.

Added red button to the flight stick like in the movie

Yay updates!

I've been ramping up the cockpit to add some more detail and realism, even if that goes astray from the cleanish lack of buttons and knobs. But I just felt it was too lonely there so I added a bunch of them and lighted them too. They are all based on real flight and electrical instruments. Labels and warning signs are based on actual jet fighter ejection seats and cockpits, just to keep it real.

Easter Egg

Also improved the material for the chair so it looks like someone actually sat and sweated a lot on top of it

Another Easter Egg